


can you think of any better way to choke?

by alexanger



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, Vampires, incubus, theres a werewolf for a single second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 23:14:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10818762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: a 2k commission. incubus!burr and vampire!laurens.





	can you think of any better way to choke?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashilrak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashilrak/gifts).



Passion has a scent. That’s one of those things that they don’t really tell you. It’s not something easily put into words - but then, what scent is? It’s nearly impossible to accurately describe something like spice cake fresh from the oven, or a breeze rolling off the ocean, or the biting air around a glacier.

“Tell me a secret,” John had said, and Aaron had blurted out the secret closest to his heart. It’s easy enough for his kind to pass as human so he's never - 

Describing the scent of emotion, though, is more difficult still. How do you explain the scent of the pounding of blood and the firing of neurons and the rising of a voice, vocal cords thrumming, heart aching, lungs shuddering? There’s no way to describe it, nor is there any way to describe desire or lust or covetousness. The scent is intoxicating, heady, something Aaron could gladly gorge himself on for days.

That’s just the scent.

But the taste of it on John’s lips -

“Incubus means nightmare,” John murmurs, and he nips at Aaron’s lip again. “At least, that’s one meaning.”

“No, it does not,” says Aaron.

John absently licks a pearl of blood away from Aaron’s lip and says, “well, it did, at least. Perhaps not anymore. I’ve seen words change so much over the decades.”

“Oh,” says Aaron. There are no other words on his tongue; it’s too full of the taste of lust. It’s not unusual to taste lust, but he’s never tasted it so strongly before. It’s almost alarming. He can feel faint wisps of emotion from the rest of the bar, even from this dark, secluded corner. The rest of John’s friends are sending out sparks of faux outrage and something that smells very much like love. It’s bracing.

“Some things, though,” says John, “never change.” His lips trail along Aaron’s jaw.

“No,” Aaron agrees.”

“You know what I am, then?”

Aaron’s breath hitches. “I wouldn’t like to go any further,” he blurts out, and it isn’t an answer but it’s all his brain can process.

“Further than - oh, do you mean your neck? Are you too sensitive?” John pulls away and grins. His canine teeth are almost goofy, oversized and pointed as they are. “Sorry. I thought there was some sort of - spark. Some sort of intimacy here. You didn’t stop me from kissing you, after all.”

“No, I’m not ticklish. And you’re right, I didn’t stop you. I only mean - I don’t think we should jump straight to - I would prefer not to jump straight to carnal relations.” He swallows. “I would rather -”

“Carnal relations,” John repeats.

“Yes, carnal relations. And you, sir, are drunk, and I refuse to spend the night with anyone who is intoxicated, as a matter of principle,” Aaron adds.

“I most certainly am not drunk,” John says.

“You smell like a distillery,” Aaron says.

He can taste a flare of annoyance from John. “I’m not drunk,” John repeats. “Whiskey goes straight through me.”

“They all say that,” says Aaron.

“Truly,” John insists. “You seem to know what I am. What do my folk eat, my dearest Burr?”

“I am well aware of what you eat,” Aaron says.

“Then what do you think happens with the things we _can’t_ eat? You can see it isn’t exploding out of me, but I’m not metabolizing it. I’m not drunk. I’m just very good at faking it.”

“Oh,” says Aaron.

“You silly ass,” John says affectionately. “Although it doesn’t matter either way. Why can’t we just enjoy the moment without allowing our thoughts to jump ahead to brainless rutting? I’m not an _animal,_ Burr. I do have _some_ sense of restraint.”

“But you were - your lips -”

“I seek pulse,” says John simply. “It’s an instinct. Besides, I can tell what you are - shouldn’t the lust excite you? Shouldn’t you be glutting yourself on it?”

“I want something else,” says Aaron.

John cocks his head and grins. “What do you want, Burr?”

“I’d like -” His mouth is dry. “To see you feed. I want to - to taste it -”

“You know, they tell us we can only take humans or our own folk as mates,” John says, and he takes Aaron’s hand. “Do you know why they tell us that?”

“I thought it was fact,” says Aaron.

“No.” John raises Aaron’s wrist to his mouth and darts his tongue out, touches the tip to the skin over his radial artery. “Because when we take other folk as mates - when we pair off with more powerful creatures - we become so much more than just the sum of our abilities. Imagine how gratifying it will be to sustain yourself on not just myself, but on everyone who happens to … donate … to me. Imagine tasting it all, Aaron, dear.”

Aaron can’t help it. He allows a small moan to fall from his lips.

“How do you know it won’t harm us?” he can’t help but ask.

“Trust me,” says John. “I’ve done this before.”

“Oh -”

“Would you like to taste it, my dear? I can give you this much, if I can’t give you anything more … carnal.”

“You mean to tell me there’s nothing carnal in the act of feeding?” Aaron asks. “That you don’t feel even a hint of lust when you devour the very essence of life? I thought more of you and your perceptive abilities, John Laurens.”

“Come with me,” is all John says.

And, all things considered, what can Aaron say but yes?

 

* * *

 

They leave the bar in a whirl. John holds a hand up in acknowledgment of his friends as they pass; Hamilton, damn him, grins at the both of them and makes a big show of licking one oversized canine.

Werewolves. None of them have any sense of decorum or propriety at all.

“Does he have fleas?” Aaron asks, and John apparently takes it as a joke because he laughs as they saunter side by side down the street.

“Not that I’ve ever seen, no,” he says. “Although he does have a rather bad habit of shaking his hair dry after bathing.”

Aaron can’t help but snort at that mental image.

There’s a parlour down the street, John has explained, specifically for his folk. “Not that others can’t attend,” he says, “but unless you happen to share our appetites, I’m afraid there isn’t much for you there.”

“Then why are you bringing me?” Aaron can’t help but snark.

“There _is_ something there for you, dear,” says John. “Me.”

Aaron feels a jump of excitement in his chest despite himself as they approach the parlour. It’s decorated, of course, in deep reds and dark wood, and there’s no signage out front. John holds the heavy red velvet curtain over the door and allows Aaron to enter first.

Immediately, he’s hit with an overwhelming wave of emotion. There’s lust there, no question; and there’s adoration, too, so intense it’s almost akin to worship. Aaron has a sudden, striking recollection of his first - and only - experience with laudanum. It’s the same strange nebulous sensation, that ethereal, dissociative suspicion that his soul has come loose from his body and is floating half a foot away. He can feel his pulse in his lips; he can feel his nerves singing in every inch of his body.

“It’s quite a lot, the first time, isn’t it?” John asks. There’s the hint of lips brushing against his ear, and then the sensation is gone. “Come. I’ll have them give us a private room.”

He can’t track his feet. There’s too much to process, too many emotions rolling in waves off of feeders and donors alike. He can barely take in the bodies laying puppy-soft and pliant, like so much meat, over assorted chaise longues and overstuffed cushions. One donor turns to look at him and smiles languidly. There is colour in her lips but not the rest of her face.

It isn’t until he and John are in the privacy of their own room that he can relax. He collapses, shaking, onto the chaise longue - upholstered, of course, in red velvet - and says, “dear God, dear God, preserve me,” over and over.

“Such supplications do no one any good here,” says John, and he grins, that wide, toothy grin, far too many teeth, far too sharp. “Don’t you know this is the refuge of vampires? We are cruel, heartless beasts, our callousness only matched by our hunger -”

“Don’t talk about yourself in such a way,” says Aaron.

“Why not?” John asks. “It’s how everyone else speaks about us, after all. I’d assume you hear the same sorts of things about your own folk, don’t you?”

Aaron is saved from replying by the arrival of the donor.

“Sir,” says the boy. He can’t be much older than twenty. “Is it to be the both of you, then? If it’s both then I’ll need to fetch another donor -”

“No, no, just me,” says John. “I’ve just brought along a … a friend.”

“Yes,” says Aaron.

“Watch, Aaron,” says John.

Aaron can’t look away. He gazes, transfixed, as John settles the boy in his lap, finds a vein, and bites down. He watches as colour drains from the boy’s face and his expression turns to one of rapture. He watches as the boy’s hands knot in the fabric of John’s breeches.

And then the emotions hit and he can’t see -

His vision is gone, just for a moment -

There’s lust, so much lust, from the boy and from John, and there’s that worship again - a deep love, a deeper longing, the taste of the peace that comes from dedicating yourself to something larger and more powerful. He has tasted the same peace and devotion rolling in waves from churches, crouched surreptitiously beside the door to feed.

And John is exuding power, control, delight at his mastery over something smaller and weaker than himself. The desire he gives off is not the desire of a lover; rather, it’s the desire to bite, to tear, to gnaw through sinew and bone. It is the desire of a predator who has fixed its teeth in its latest kill.

Aaron can’t help but moan, and the boy echoes it, and then John echoes it. For a moment, the three of them breathe in tandem. Aaron finds his hands knotted in the fabric of his own breeches; he wonders just how much of his posture, how much of the expression on his face, echoes the boy’s.

“John,” says Aaron, but his voice is small and cracked. He clears his throat and tries again. “John -”

John pulls off of the boy’s neck and licks away a last droplet of blood. “Mm?”

“I need you -”

John gently guides the boy off of his lap to lounge against a cushion, and then hastens to Aaron’s side. “What is it?” he asks, and then he puts a hand to Aaron’s forehead. “Dear, you’re perspiring - are you alright?”

Aaron is shaking. He wonders what’s come over him - where this sudden weakness has come from - and then he stands and he feels power, heady and intoxicating, surge through him. It isn’t weakness at all.

“Kiss me,” he says to John.

John kisses him, deep and possessive, and Aaron can taste salt and rust on his lips. There’s the taste, too, of life; it’s something dark and unfathomable and as it spreads over his tongue he notices he’s hard. He wonders idly how long he’s been in such a state.

“John,” he breathes. “John - are you still hungry, dear?”

“I’ve never passed up a meal,” says John against his lips.

“Take me,” says Aaron.

“You’re dismissed,” John says to the boy. “Can you manage on your own?”

“Yes, sir,” says the donor. He stands on unsteady legs and lets himself out.

As the door clicks shut, John pushes Aaron down onto the chaise, and then straddles him. “Cravat off,” he says.

Aaron unties his cravat and moves his collar. “I’m ready,” he says. He knows John can feel how hard he is - damn him, the man is sitting back against him - and he knows he’ll only get harder, and he wonders idly just what John will do to him once they’ve both been sated.

He can feel John’s lust as his hips roll. He can feel John’s desire breaking over him like waves against sand. He can feel John’s predatory desire.

John kisses him, then trails his lips down Aaron’s neck to seek a vein.

And bites.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are my laudanum. chat to me at [alexangery.tumblr.com](http://alexangery.tumblr.com) and consider [buying me a coffee](http://ko-fi.com/A02514GB)


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